Kids thrilled to fight bullying in film

Evan Hennigar, Grace Adams, Maggie Baxter and Connor Zinck, students from Bayview Community School in Mahone Bay, made an anti-cyber bullying video that so impressed Education Department officials they were asked to provide ideas for a campaign being launched by the department this holiday season. (BEVERLEY WARE / South Shore Bureau)

MAHONE BAY — The principal pulled Grace Adams and three of her friends from their classrooms and took them to the guidance counsellor’s office.

“We were all scared … because we didn’t know what it was about,” the 12-year-old student at Bayview Community School in Mahone Bay said.

But they were all in the clear.

Craig Pottie just wanted to tell them the anti-cyberbullying video they’d made had won a provincial Education Department contest. He also told them they would be involved in making a similar video that would have an even wider impact.

Their involvment in the latter video consisted of presenting ideas to the marketing team that made an anti-cyberbullying film that will be shown in Empire Theatres and before Halifax Mooseheads and Cape Breton Screaming Eagle games during the Christmas season.

“The day we found out we’d won is the day that girl killed herself,” Evan Hennigar said quietly.

The girl he was referring to was Amanda Todd of British Columbia, who took her life just over a month before her 16th birthday. She was depressed and anxious after being bullied online and in person.

Evan, 11, is the mastermind behind the team’s winning video.

His message is clear: “Sometimes people don’t think about the people. They just think they’re a profile and that it

doesn’t actually hurt, … but there’s a person behind the profile.”

No stranger to acting, Evan played an “annoying kid” during last week’s filming of an upcoming Christmas episode of Call Me Fitz, starring Jason Priestley. He’s appeared in an episode of the science fiction series Haven and on the CBC comedy Mr. D.

“Ironically, it was the bullying episode,” Evan said, recalling the role in which he played the son of a man who was bullied by Mr. D when they were kids.

“My mom told me about the (Education Department) contest and I thought it would be cool to give it a shot, but I never thought we’d actually win,” Evan said.

It took him a couple of hours to write the script, which tells the stories of four kids who are the victims of bullying.

Grace plays a girl who’s marking the first anniversary of her father’s death.

“I go online and say it’s going to be a very hard day and people start saying things like I’m ‘such a baby,’ and ‘get over yourself.’ It hurts her because she thinks nobody cares.”

In her role, Maggie Baxter, who turns 12 today, posts her piano performance on the Internet.

“People say things like, ‘You suck, you should stop playing,’” she said. “It makes my character sad because she’s being told she’s not good at something she likes doing.’

(Maggie plays the piano in real life, though not right now because she has a cast on her right arm.)

Connor Zinck, also 12, plays a guy who breaks up with his girlfriend and bears the brunt of gossips who tell him he’s not good enough for her.

Evan plays a young soccer player who hurts his leg during a game, which his team ultimately loses.

“He says, ‘Good try, boys, we’ll get it next time,’ and (the other team says), ‘No you won’t, your boys suck,’ and ‘I hope your leg is broken,’” Evan said.

None of the kids have experienced bullying or cyber-bullying in real life, though a friend of Grace’s experienced bullying through Facebook.

“They were calling her bad names and saying she shouldn’t go to school and she shouldn’t even be on the Earth,” Grace said.

The girl became withdrawn. With the situation escalating, Grace told her mother about the comments. Her mother, in turn told the school, and school officials responded by speaking with the students involved, she said.